He said an open relationship. He didn't mean THAT open.
Did I do something wrong?
Hi Jake,
My boyfriend and I have been together for about four years, and six months ago, we decided to open up our relationship. Before doing so, we had an honest talk about rules, expectations, safer sex, and what we wanted. We ultimately decided that outside hookups were allowed as long as we were transparent about them.
A few weeks ago, a group of friends and I ended up back at someone’s house after a night out. Long story short, I hooked up with a woman. My boyfriend wasn’t there, but I told him about it the next day because that’s what we’d agreed to do.
I expected him to laugh or maybe be surprised. Instead, he got really upset.
He said it felt different than if I’d hooked up with a guy. He started asking if I was secretly bisexual and whether I’d eventually want to be with a woman instead. But I’ve always been open about being sexually fluid, and he knew that.
I don’t understand why gender suddenly matters. Open is open, right? If he hooked up with someone within the boundaries we’d agreed on, I wouldn’t care who it was.
Now he’s accusing me of being insensitive to his feelings, but I feel like I’m being blamed for breaking a rule that was never discussed.
Bi-Curious George
Dear Bi-Curious George,
When navigating open relationships, it’s almost impossible to anticipate every situation you might encounter, no matter how many conversations you have up front. You can discuss boundaries, safety, rules around communication, and every scenario you can think of, but eventually, life throws you a curveball that nobody saw coming.
It sounds like that’s what happened, and the only thing that’s really “missing” is a conversation about what this experience revealed—and whether anything changes going forward. Because clearly, this wasn’t on your boyfriend’s bingo card (and maybe not on yours either).
Up until now, your sexual fluidity was mostly theoretical. It was something the two of you knew about, but it hadn’t really shown up in the relationship. Then one night, it did.
There’s nothing unusual about that. Attraction doesn’t always fit neatly into a box. Plenty of people are primarily attracted to one gender while still experiencing attraction, curiosity, or connection with others. Hooking up with a woman doesn’t automatically mean you’re secretly straight, confused, or halfway out the door.
For you, this hookup wasn’t a big deal. You met someone, had some fun, and afterward told your boyfriend exactly as you’d agreed. The fact that it was a woman might even feel completely irrelevant to you.
For your boyfriend, however, it activated something very different.
Maybe he’s worried you’re more bisexual than he realized. Maybe he’s wondering whether a woman offers something he never could. Maybe he’s questioning what your sexual fluidity means for the two of you. Sometimes those fears can shake our assumptions about who a partner is and what we thought we knew about them.
Whatever the reason, it’s clear that this experience landed in a different emotional category than two men hooking up.
That’s why I don’t think this is about who’s right and who’s wrong. It’s about understanding what this experience brought to the surface.
I’d just be careful about trying to explain away your boyfriend’s feelings because they don’t make sense to you. “Open is open” may be true from your perspective, but emotional reactions don’t always follow the same logic as relationship agreements. If you focus on proving that gender shouldn’t matter, you may miss an opportunity to understand why it suddenly does.
At the same time, having a feeling and having a boundary are not the same thing. Your boyfriend is allowed to feel surprised, threatened, confused, or insecure. That doesn’t automatically mean you violated the agreement.
So instead of debating who’s right, get curious. Ask what specifically felt different about this. Ask what fears came up for him. Ask what story he started telling himself. And share what appealed to you about this experience and why it felt worth exploring.
You may find that neither of you is actually disagreeing about a woman at all. You’re uncovering fears, assumptions, and questions about what this experience means for the future.
One of the realities of non-monogamy is that it gives people the freedom to explore parts of themselves they might otherwise never discover. And when that happens, new information emerges. What matters most isn’t whether that information is comfortable—it’s what the two of you choose to do with it.
If there’s something on your mind, send it to jake@askjaketherapy.com
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